Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Tuesday, July 18.

Opposition from two more GOP senators spells potential end for health-care overhaul (“The decision by Sens. Mike Lee and Jerry Moran to join Rand Paul and Susan Collins in opposing the Republican rewrite of the Affordable Care Act threw the effort to pass health-care legislation into turmoil. In the wake of their announcement, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called for a showdown vote, White House aides vowed to press ahead and Democrats pounced on the opportunity to declare the effort dead.”)

Trump’s treasury secretary is hurtling toward potential debt-limit fiasco (“Steven Mnuchin’s struggles to win support in Congress or the White House for his strategy to raise the federal debt ceiling are casting doubt on whether the political neophyte has the Washington clout to win approval of a measure that could be necessary to avoid a historic, market-rattling default on U.S. government debt.”)

GOP faces growing demographic nightmare in West (“Republicans who have watched Nevada politics in recent years worry their party’s struggles in the Silver State will be a harbinger of things to come as the face of the American electorate changes — especially in other Mountain West states such as Arizona and Colorado.”)

BCRA is dead but Obamacare repeal is still alive (“The problem, fundamentally, for people who care about health insurance coverage is that of the four Republican defectors only one — Collins — objects to the bill on the grounds that it doesn’t cover enough people.”)

The Trumps and the Truth (“Don’t you get it, guys? Special counsel Robert Mueller and the House and Senate intelligence committees are investigating the Russia story. Everything that is potentially damaging to the Trumps will come out, one way or another. Everything. Denouncing leaks as ‘fake news’ won’t wash as a counter-strategy beyond the President’s base, as Mr. Trump’s latest 36% approval rating shows.”)

Trumpcare as We Know It Is Dead (“There is almost no chance that the repeal-only measure will pass, especially because it already has a Congressional Budget Office score, and it’s even more horrific than the estimates for various versions of the failed GOP replacement plan.”)

Two more Democrats join 5th District race (“Ben Cullop, of Albemarle County, and Leslie Cockburn, of Rappahannock County, filed for candidacy on July 2 and 13, respectively, according to the Federal Election Commission’s website. They join Marine veteran Roger Dean Huffstetler, attorney and former prosecutor Andrew Sneathern and Adam Slate, who works for the University of Virginia Health System. All three are residents of Charlottesville.”)

Editorial: Why should rural Virginia care who gets elected governor? (“On Saturday, Gillespie and Northam hold their first debate. Their audience in Hot Springs will be a statewide one — lawyers from throughout the Old Dominion assembled at The Homestead for the annual Virginia Bar Association convention. But we still ask the candidates to give this part of the state some reason why we should have a stake in this year’s governor’s race. Northam may, or may not, do this today, when he releases what is billed as his ‘rural economic policy plan.’ We’ll see what it says.”)